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Some make cosmology into a non-theistic metaphysics

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For example, Tufts University cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, of whom William Lane Craig* notes,

Vilenkin and, more famously, James Hartle and Stephen Hawking have proposed models of the universe that Vilenkin candidly calls exercises in “metaphysical cosmology.” In his best-selling popularization of his theory, Hawking even reveals an explicitly theological orientation. He concedes that on the Standard Model one could legitimately identify the Big Bang singularity as the instant at which God created the universe. Indeed, he thinks that a number of attempts to avoid the Big Bang were probably motivated by the feeling that a beginning of time “smacks of divine intervention.” He sees his own model as preferable to the Standard Model because there would be no edge of space-time at which one “would have to appeal to God or some new law.” As we shall see, he is not at all reluctant to draw theological conclusions on the basis of his model.- William Lane Craig, “Naturalism and the Origin of the Universe”, in Bruce L. Gordon and William A. Dembski, The Nature of Nature (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), pp. 515.

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Also: Some will accept cosmic string landscape theory strictly to evade the implications of fine tuning of the universe

Some cautiously embrace the multiverse for the sake of defending Darwinism

* Yes, that William Lane Craig, the one theoretical physicist Larry Krauss accuses of disingenuousness in debate.

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